Ok,let me first say, I'm no web designer!
Now with the disclaimer out of the way.

Guy's,
Here is a link to my wife's site
www.thebrownsoapcompany.com

Take a look and let me know what you think.
Leagal has been a Major part of the success of this venture for my wife and I. For any of you that may be on the fence e-mail or call me. I would be happy to tell you what has worked for us. If we can do this, anyone can do this!
We just filled a $1,200.00 order for another co-op's green fair. I look forward to hearing what you think.
Thanks again Leagal!

quote:

Ok,let me first say, I'm no web designer!

Well, you could've fooled me!...
I like it! Congratulations.

Now, I saw something in the "soap" page that got me thinking: the disclaimer about the peanut oil glycerin. Do you know for a fact that peanut oil glycerin can cause problems to allergic people, or you just put the disclaimer as a precaution?
And in case it was only a precaution, does anybody know anything about it?

Congratulations again!

I don't know for sure that it would effect some one with a peanut allergy,but we did not want to take a chance. We could not get an answer on it so we put the warning up. Thank you,I'm still working on the online shopping cart.
Jason

No, thank you. That's something I wouldn't have thought about.
Come to think of it, it would probably be a good idea to start a thread about it. Maybe some of the chemists here can shed some light on the issue...

Jason,

Excellent website!
I love to make that soap too! When I find the time.

Bob

Ok, I got the online shopping cart done. I don't have the liquid soap on yet we are out after a large order. The other thing is I don't have pictures for each bar. But the colors I have are brown,brown and oh yeah brown with shea butter! Thanks for all the posative feedback!

what exactly do you do to turn the glycerin into soap?

Take a look at www.blackcrownsoap.com
e-mail Luc he is the godfather of bio soap and the reason I'm where I'm at!
Jason

Thanks for the cudos Jason. You and your wife are the proof that it works if you have a mind to make it work. You guys have done a marvelous job.

The second edition Soap Guide is now available from my site via snail mail or the other usual suspects for PayPal payments.More content and photos.

The Black Crown Biodiesel Soap Business PLan has also been upgraded with recent photos ect.

We are now offering them seperately or as a combo deal.

I've visited the Brown Soap Company and find it interesting. Congratulations on making a business out of your soapmaking. I have been making soap--bar and liquid--from my KOH and NAOh glycerine. I give my soaps to my restaurant owners as thank you's for their oil. I have given away over 300 bars to fellow teachers, friends, family, and people who ask about my soap, gallons to a state patrol district garage, a school bus garage, several women who clean houses for a living,a RV campground, and some Motorcycle racers have all been testing and using my liquid KOH. I make 50 gal batches and give it away upon request. Now I have people who want to purchase the soap, but I feel I need a spec sheet on the ingredients, particularly the meth that might be left in my glycerine. I distill at 325-350 degrees for 30 minutes. I work with 3 gal of glycerine at a time, so it takes a lot of patience to get my 50 gal made. I bought Legal Eagle's Black Crown book and have done pretty well with my soap. I noticed on the Brown Soap co. that there is not mention of "ingredients." Have you run into any problems with people wondering about your trace meth levels? What is your process to demeth? I just want to make sure I am making a product that cannot get me into any trouble. Don't i need to prove the chemical makeup of my soaps? I found a lab called Tribiology that will test down to 1000 ppm. I haven't found out the cost yet.

Any advice from any of you soap makers?

I also make about 50 gallons of bio a week to run our 05 Passat TDI, 03 Jetta TDI, and an 83 Dodge Ram Diesel.

To all you out there, this forum has taught me loads about tweaking and improving my bio process. I had a senior English student learn to make bio and soap as her senior graduation project, and I became interested immediately. Her mentor has been producing biodiesel for almost 3 years and taught me how to make it. My husband and I built the Appleseed and havent bought diesel for almost a year. I am grateful to have this website and to glean invaluable info from many of you.

quote:

I distill at 325-350 degrees for 30 minutes. I work with 3 gal of glycerine at a time,

3gal = 11.34Lt (11.5) 30 minutes isn't long enough, double it.If you can control the head temp to stabilise at 150-155F and keep it there you won't risk the possiblity of burning it.

I distill 30LT at a time and it takes the better part of the afternoon.

If you list, "soap" usually does it. The saponification process is well documented and used pretty much universally when speaking of a handmade soap; commercial soaps are a different creature altogether.
The only other thing that would be required is any scents used as some people have ractions to various scents. We only use essential oils in ours and every person is made aware of that fact before buying. I use a colour code to indentify the various scents (each scent has a diffenerent coloured tag), and this prompts questions about it.

Soap ingredients: saponified layers of di,tri and mono glycerides combined with FFA's (Free Fatty Acids).Lavender (or whichever) essential oil used for scenting.NaOH/KOH used as the caustic reaction agent. Water.

Thanks for the info. I will drop my temp down and shoot for an hour. I started out boiling my glycerine on a hot plate, where the temp did stay around 150, but I read on this site that this low temp might leave too much meth in the glycerine. I don't know what too much is, but my husband and his brothers use my demethed glycerine to oil their plywood concrete forms as a release agent, and a local garage washes their tools and parts in the demethed glycerine and I wouldn't want to have meth in it that could catch a spark. I did take the advice you gave someone else about boiling some and seeing if the vapor would light. My glycerine and liquid soap makes no attempt to light when I boil it and provide a spark. I will go back to my original temps and time. I was worrying about the "trace" meth left and read that higher temps would remove more meth. Your soap book is direct and has helped me produce what seems like a great soap. Thanks

150F is the *head* temp I maintain not the pot temp. The pot temp is closer to 220F with a fluctuation from 200-220F.
I once had my pot temp up around 300F and then tried to make soap from it directly after distilling. It was an interesting experience.Never got to enjoy the soap but the dramatics were fun.
The thing to remember is that with the transesterification process (making biodiesel) a great deal of the saponification (soap making) has already occured. This is what seperates what we do from the more traditional methods of soap making; ours is already over half way there when we get it and it only needs to be pushed along a bit to finish the jobv. The challenge isn't maing soap, it is making soap within the parameters of the various variables (feedstock ect) we have to work with.
Even if you have what you would consider a missed batch cause of it's aesthetics isn't. It will still work every bit as well as the nice looking stuff, you just can't very well sell it.
We have now finally eliminated the last of the commercial soap we had in the house by replacing laundry detergent with our liquid soap. It does a very nice job, and a scented drier sheet will take care of any potential residual smell of the glyc (if there is a problem with that).

quote:

Your soap book is direct and has helped me produce what seems like a great soap.

If it looks like a duck ...

Ok, I'm fuzzy on head temp. If I put a candy thermometer in my glycerine and read 150, is that where it needs to be?

I know you must get tired of answering so many questions, but....your info is so helpful. I've been reading for months before I decided to jump in with bio and soap questions.

Head temperature is the temp at the top of the distilling unit in the steam stream.

What you have described is the pot tempearture. you will need to bring this up to 150F and then slowly increase it to just over 200F before letting it all cool down again.

Please be sure to not stand downwind while doingthis as boiling off the methanol is dangerous as it is a neuro toxin, so stay out of it's fume path.

If you plan on getting into this with any sort of regular volume look into building a distilling unit to recover the methanol so it can be reused in follow up batches. It is safer for your health, and better for the environment.

Jason,

Sorry we haven't been able to connect for the chat on the phone.

Are you happy with GoDaddy for the web hosting? I have two ideas that I am going to make into separate websites. One of course being soap! The other, my controller and reviews of other controllers for bio-d and wvo use.

Legal,

How have you changed the distilling unit? It says you have changed it somewhat in the link. I am going to build a still for methanol recovery for the glycerin because I want to speed the process of making bio-d and want to take advantage of the glycerin still being hot from the processor.

I never got to bottle the hand soap and give it out at the car show in July here in town. I have some squeeze bottles and will add a pumice to the soap to offer "gritty" and "non-gritty". The scent will be a nice orange-citrus smell.

Lastly, why the name "Black Crown"?

The distilling unit is now a water heater(48Lt) but I have kept the same condenser and am using a ShurFlo pump to circulate the water through it. Overkill but it is a backup in case my main ShurFlo craps on me. It has done faithful duty for 4 years now, but it is when you don't have and need that things break, so scout's moto ...

You can use pumice but it will sink like the rock that it is unless you are talking about bar soap, and even here it is a bit tricky. Being heavy it wants to follow gravity so mixing it in must be done when the bars have almost stiffened. A bit of a time-trick factor.
A better product and not so heavy is Loofah.Ground Loofah is every bit as abrasive and lighter so less likely to drop like the rock that it isn't (it's a Chinese vegetable).
I still have a piece of bar soap I made with Loofah, but I used a little too much and the thing is almost like a Brillo pad (that's a scrouring pad for non N Americans) Brillo/SOS/Bulldog ect.

Orange-citrus sounds nice.

Black Crown was inspired by Black Knight. It sounded medieval and I like it. I can't play on my name and the soap's colour, like a certain Brown Soap Co. guy did . Can you just immagine calling it Blais, which when pronounced in French is Bleh. "Hey buddy, want to buy some of my bleh soap?" Don't think so, it is after all brown coloured and so bleh and brown don't make for energetic sales propects so Black Crown it is. Sorta regal, but in a mischievous way I like regal ... and mischievous

Well,

We could call it "Savon Noir"

But, with all of the praise, I have an idea that comes from a New England slang term.

Black Crown will be one of the offered soaps.

As soon as I decide on a web hosting vendor I will spill the beans here.

quote:

Originally posted by RNCarl:
Well,

We could call it "Savon Noir"

But, with all of the praise, I have an idea that comes from a New England slang term.

Black Crown will be one of the offered soaps.

As soon as I decide on a web hosting vendor I will spill the beans here.

So,

I decided on a web host. We shall see if they are p to snuff.

The slang used in New England when something is very good is to call it "wicked". If something is outstanding it is a "wicked-pissa" Depending on the inflection in one's voice, "wicked-pissa" could also be very bad.

Since everyone thinks the soap they make is a "wiked-pissa" good soap, I just shortened it to keep it politically correct, and as legal pointed out, I wouldn't want someone to buy "pissa" soap.

Thus, The Wicked Good Soap Company is born. The website is wickedgoodsoap.com - Don't bother surfing over there just yet, I just bought the domain and have to build the site.

I only hope I can make it 1/10 as successful as Jason has with the Brown Soap Company!

Actually "Savon Noir" is a French Trade Name for ... black soap.It sells here at a natural health food shop for ... $49.00/4Lt.
After reading the label and it's properties and qualities I came to understand that my soap will do each and every thing that this $50/gal soap will do.
What we have in the BD glyc soap is an excellent product, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. What we need to do now is find it's market. It's there, it needs to be exploited and encouraged is all. It's brown, so are a lot of people. So what ? Get over it. Old world Europeans don't have a problem with the colour, it's what their mom's used to make back home.
Same with Middle Eastern families, West Indies ect. It is only in N.America that people have been conditioned otherwise. Time to break 'em out of the box (or mold if you prefer)

Carl;
When you get your site up and running let me know so I can add a link to it.If you care to do the photo thing with yourself and your product(s) I'll build a soap page for you, like I did for Jason and others and link the site from there. The more the merrier, I say.